How many times might you have died (or lived a miserable life) if it weren't for the advent of antibiotics in the 50's and/or modern medicine?

Died? Only once. Once dead it is hard to die again. (Unless you are Bruce Willis.)

I sooooo wish that bit “I would have been crippled, blind and all around ugly”, wasn’t so funny, but I cant stop giggling :)
I would have died within a week of being born….. I got Septicaemia from my mum as I was being born, she wasn’t allowed to see me for the first 2 weeks of my life because I was so ill.

I was born with extra toes on each foot, so that made me pretty freaky to start with. They removed one at birth that was just hanging there, and the other one had bones and a joint in it, so they did surgery when I was 2.5years old. I had pneumonia as a baby and probably would have died then… so the extra toes and everything else is probably mute point. But I also have needed antibiotics other times of my life too. Then there is my Graves Disease which I probably would have died of by now had there not been a medication that worked for me. So, yeah… ‘CHEERS’ to modern medicine!

I was 8 weeks premature. In 1972, that was about the limit of what they could handle. So, modern medicine is definitely responsible for me being here to enlighten/entertain/annoy everyone on Fluther. :-)

YAY!! To all!! Except @DarkScribe, who is being a pain! You can “almost” die a bunch of times before you actually DIE!

Car wrecks aside,and a few other narrow escapes,I would’ve been dead at the age of 25 had it not been for insulin ;)

aside from when i was a baby, maybe, the only antibiotic or pill i’ve ever had to take was for an absessed tooth i had last year and ended up getting a root canal on. the dentist hadn’t caught it soon enough (ie: at the special appointment i made because my tooth was KILLING ME) and so by my next visit it had formed an infection so we had to kill it off. that was it. other than that, i dont do pills (birth control is an exception). but absessed teeth can get nasty and actually really do bad things to the rest of your body if you dont catch the infection!

I could have died twice.
And so could my Jelly Buddy Vanessa!

Strep throat (once), staph infection inside a lumpecdomy incision and Lyme disease (several times).

I’ve suffered from asthma since I was 4 or 5.
Without those Albuterol rescue inhalers.. who knows? Too many more times than I’d like to think about.

If I lived before the advent of antibiotics, I’m fairly certain I would be dead right now. I’ve had strep throat 3 times, multiple ear infections (one where I lost my hearing in one ear for over a month), multiple bouts of bronchitis, and several bladder infections.

The bladder infections I’ve learned to avoid, but I had one that landed me in the ER because I took too long to be treated (I thought it was gone and something else was the matter).. anyway, at the hospital, they were shocked at the severity of the infection, and gave me super-antibiotics and a wonderful pain med via IV. That one would most certainly have killed me without antibiotics. Actually, I posted a question a while back about what people pre-antibiotics did for bladder infections, as these alone would probably have been the death of me.

Probably when I swallowed a piece of lego when I was 4.
Thank God for legoctomies.

Okay no really, would’ve kicked it about 2 seconds in, I hadn’t managed the art of breathing so had to be put on a ventilator for.. a while.

Strep throats, can’t believe it can hurt so bad!, tooth abscesses and a eye infection from my little 6 mos old puking up in them! I was holding him above me while lying on the floor. It went from one eye to the other and gave me a cellulitis in my face. This cellulitis concerned the doctor because it was getting too close to my brain. I also had an infected tumor above the roof of my mouth. Gawd, that hurt!! Some special dentist type sliced my skin where lip joins gum and pus and blood flowed out. I went each morning to have more pus sucked out! The pain or freezing the roof of my mouth was almost enouh to kill me- when a dentist warns you to hang on to something!! So I think I’d have been dead or wished I was without antibiotics!! My grandfather died from a small cut that became infected pre antibiotics- septicemia.

Definitely at least three times, and I’m only seventeen. That isn’t including strep throat, either, which I know I’ve had at least once or twice…

So, yeah, if I managed to survive childhood strep throat I would have definitely died at age fourteen; that’s when my autoimmune disease became active. If I hadn’t been able to get blood transfusions, I probably wouldn’t be around today.

Then last year I had another bout of my autoimmune disease flaring up, and it was worse than the first time. More blood transfusions and intravenous nutrition, this time. Then, my intravenous line got infected and went septic and I almost died even with the use of modern medicine. Although, that wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for modern medicine, either, because I never would have had that IV.

@cazzie…... were you allowed to keep the extra toes as souvenirs?

@JeffVader As an infant, I guess I lacked the ability and foresight to ask. No. I don’t think I would have wanted to, either. My son was born with a tiny extra finger. We thought about asking for it back, after they cut it off when he was a month old and pictured him in his late teens, with this thing in a small vial around his neck as he played in a death-metal-rock band. Silly.

@cazzie Hehehehe….. yeh, Doctors are odd like that. They seem to think we’ll want anything they cut off or out of us back, many thanks :)

@JeffVader You’d be surprised at some of the stuff sitting in formaldehyde in old pathology labs. ;-)

@Dr_Dredd Hahahahaha….... the mind boggles :)

In summary, if it weren’t for modern medicine Fluther wouldn’t exist!!

Boggle Boggle.

@cazzie Dont knock it…. there’s not enough boggling these days :)

Boogling causes unwanted marriages. You know.

@Val123 You know… I think I read something about that once… giggle yeah… less boogling… more rational thought should have been used. Really.

I went into anaphalaxis….because of antibiotics. and almost died.

@jazmina88 And…?

@Val123 I don’t think she actually died. ;-)

@Dr_Dredd You never know! Medicine these days can do some amazing things! Look at all the lawyers walking around who’ve had brain amputations!

I don’t remember what I was thinking when I asked “And….?”

@Val123 That reminds me of a collection of “stupid lawyer sayings” I once read. My favorite was this one:

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?

WITNESS: No

ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?

WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.

ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?

WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere.

@Dr_Dredd Guilty here! That story is exactly what I was thinking of when I wrote my post!